Overcompensation
by Aservis Roturier
Summary: Just exactly what IS Charles Grey's issue with the butler of Phantomhive? Some mature themes and rough language.


Overcompensating

a/n Set immediately after manga #37, so beware of spoilers if you've yet to read that and what follows. Lots of footnotes on this one.

...

"Just step up onto the usual stool, _Lord Grey_ and I'll be with you in a trice," Nina Hopkins mumbled and smirked around her mouthful of pins. _Talented mouth,_ Grey mused, watching her closely. Hopkins continued: "I'll just fetch my records and then we'll take a fresh set of measurements to make certain my patterns are up-to-date!" Both Charleses watched the energetic, peculiar woman scuttle off talking to herself.

"Not a problem Nina, take your time," drawled the daintier half of 'Double Charles,' watching the female tailor bouncing about both the front and back rooms of her shop, collecting the needed items (pins, tailor's chalk, notes, tape,) for a general fitting.

Neither half of the special Queen's envoy batted an eyelash when the designer/tailor pulled shut the dividing curtain on the communicating door and ripped her specially designed skirt from about her hips to reveal the scandalous, leg-revealing 'clothing' beneath, now she was out of the public eye. Grey was used to the woman's outré antics, even her little pinches and excessive touching, and took it all in stride. Phipps too, knew her well enough not to comment on her garb, not wanting another 'Mrs. Bloomer' lecture^.

However strange, Hopkins was a special friend and Earl Grey wouldn't dream of patronising any Saville Row tailor when in need of a wardrobe update so long as Miss Nina was available instead.

"I... understand you were recently at the Phantomhive's for some emergency custom work for him and his little fiancee." Grey drawled casually. The two exchanged meaning glances as the other half of the Queen's butlers looked on, radiating disapproval from his station at the connecting doorway.

"Then I suppose you ran into old 'Stick-up-the-arse'?"Grey said smirking.

"But of course. _Can_ one visit the Phantomhive without running into the Phantomhive butler?"

"Hasn't changed one whit, I suppose."

"Alas no," Miss Nina sneered, then quickly brightened. "But young Phantomhive remains as delightfully asexual as ever_... oh_, those smooth, curvaceous _legs,_" Miss Nina unshipped a sigh, grinning widely (and in Phipps' opinion, more than a little like a madwoman.) _I'll never understand what Grey sees in her..._

"Bumptious, brooding bastard... thinks he's bleeding Heathcliff, dunnee?" If there was one thing Grey despised it was someone who thought he was better than the Queen's butlers— especially the Grey half _and that jumped-up commoner... _well, suffice it to say Nina shared Grey's opinion of the slick, urbane, slightly sinister Phantomhive butler. "Mark my words, Nina, one day, _one day quite soon, he'll get his_," Icy grey eyes sought out another pair equally sharp, equally full of mischief and forbidden secrets. "I'll be making certain of it personally," Grey finished in a soft murmur as Nina stretched her measuring tape up, up,_ up_ to confirm the length of an inside leg seam.

"Still 'dressing to the right'?+" Nina asked, a secret smirk on her lips, knowing full well the only thing Grey 'dressed to the right' in her trousers was a stiletto and a 'sap'# for insurance in close, hand-to-hand fighting.

Over by the door back to the showroom, Phipps, having been in on Grey's cross-dressing secret since their shared childhoods, clicked his tongue at the two women tightened his arms across his chest and looked away. He wished the woman he loved would quit this foolishness and forget her families' obsession with holding onto titles and resume her true gender's proper place in society so he could openly declare his feelings and ask for her hand—after all, he had a title too, one even greater than the one Grey held onto with her sneaky subterfuge.

But Grey wasn't having it: her only ambition in life was to prove _no_ man was better than she was at _anything—_which, he suspected, was the true source of her virulent antipathy toward the suave, capable and oh-so-handsome Phantomhive butler. And _tall._ Tall was one of those irrational obsessions Grey could never forgive a person for—as if it were a person's choice! She even hated _Phipps_ a little for it and was apt to boot him hard in the shins if he forgot himself and inadvertently 'loomed' over her as she called it.

But Sebastian, Sebastian was tall and handsome _and_ _talented_— not to mention not at all intimidated by the little spitfire Grey and her over-the-top Napoleonic posturings— an utterly unforgivable combination in her book. He made everything he did look _so easy_ with his leonine grace and near-permanent devilish smirk. It was a 'perfect storm'of reasons to despise him as far as she was concerned.

Grey not-so-secretly loathed him. Spat on his shadow every chance she got and called down evil on the day he was born.

Which was why Grey had so thoroughly and vehemently denounced the guard dog and his butler's choices in the recent kidnapping case which the queen had codenamed 'Pied Piper,' the one involving the nobleman, the circus and all those kidnapped children. In Phipps' opinion, her denunciations had only made Grey herself look petty and irrational before the Queen (God save her!) a fact not entirely lost on Grey herself. It was actually the source of her latest private vendetta against the house of Phantomhive whom she blamed entirely for making her look bad in front of Her Majesty.

Phipps, in a very dark moment, wondered briefly whether Grey and her family had had anything at all to do with what happened to young Ciel's family all those years ago. But he shook it off (because he simply _had_ to! It wasn't a thought worthy of entertaining, surely?) Even Grey would not stoop so low!

Would she?

No, impossible. Impossible! What was he thinking? Murdering people? Not his Charlie-girl. At any rate, for once he'd put his foot down and refused to get involved in Grey's latest insanity beyond accompanying her to deliver the letter to the estate. Beyond that, he washed his hands of the entire affair.

"Observe anything useful?" Grey muttered to Hopkins, meaning during her visit to the Phantomhive's.

"Just the usual. Obnoxiously perfect and arrogant as ever," Nina supplied. "The servants had just blown the kitchens sky high yet again, demolished a whole wing this time—everything and everyone coated in soot save one—guess who. Other than that, business as usual."

"That _is _business as usual for the Phantomhives," Grey quipped with a satisfied smirk. "Make certain you add those secret pockets to the basic design of this one, Nina" Grey reminded, fingering a couple of glass ampules in her pocket. "I'm going to need of every single one of them, especially the little one behind the lapel on this mission!" Grey called as she leapt from the stool, grabbed Phipps by the back of his sleeve and dragged him out the shop.

"Let's go find some pub grub and stuff ourselves silly," she said cheerily, suddenly skipping forward on the pavement and unsheathing her sword, swinging it about shockingly and rather injudiciously. "I want to celebrate!" She shouted. "My machinations mature, Phipps. I can _taste_ that bastard Michaelis's defeat it's so close and it's giving me an _appetite_! I could _murder _a butty right now, hahaha! 'I behold that devil of a butler already fallen from heaven like lightning!'"**

Grey laughed aloud, turning pirouettes on the pavement in eager anticipation of whatever it was she was up to—dear god, he didn't want to know. Phipps got her to sheathe her weapon before she winged someone with it. She was far too free with waving that thing about at completely inappropriate moments for his tastes.

"Take care, Charlie-girl," Phipps whispered as he caught up with her, his voice equal measures of care and concern. It felt faintly blasphemous to him being friends with someone with the audacity to twist divine scripture to so doubtlessly unholy a plan as whatever Grey was cooking up. "Take care you don't end up more like Haman than Michael,** scheming against an innocent and celebrating far too soon."

"Pssh! Hush up, you old stick in the mud! You're far too serious. Anyway, my intrigues are seamless. No one shall guess my involvement and that bastard Michaelis **_will_**, _fall_, _even if I have to strike him down myself_. You'll see!"

And of course she was right: fell he had. What she didn't foresee was how quickly and easily he would rise again...

.

...

.

**Phipps is referring to Esther chapter 7 where Haman, an enemy of the Jews, tries to arrange a slaughter of them all—but especially Mordecai, a servant in the king's house of whom he is particularly jealous—but ends up executed on the gibbet (gallows) he'd had specially built for the elderly Jew.

A very apt quotation in view of Grey's injudicious paraphrase of Jesus' words from Luke 10:18 where she compares Sebastian to an already conquered and fallen Satan (how much does she actually know?!) thrown out of Heaven by the Archangel-the role Grey seems to fancy for herself!

It would be quite typical for a well-educated person of Ciel's era to be able to call up such allusions to such a (at least by today's Biblically illiterate standards,) obscure passage of Holy Writ — even if, like Grey, they weren't particularly God-fearing. Also not unusual that Phipps' reference be instantly understood by anyone who heard it for the stinging reprimand it was.

+In bespoke (custom) tailoring, individual measurements are so carefully customized to the individual there is even a certain small amount of extra fullness allowed to accommodate-*ahem!*-the slightly 'asymmetrical proportions' of what fills a man's trousers. Generally. it isn't necessary to ask, as the tailor, pulling, pinning and otherwise manipulating the garment on his (yes, _his_: they were _never _women!) customer while the customer is standing on some sort of elevation such as a stool (groin at about eye level), is more than close enough to observe which side a man habitually 'dresses to' without asking, and will make a note and adjust his customized pattern accordingly. Nina's just being a cheeky monkey here, and probably just trying to annoy Phipps, whom she's already rudely 'cut' by giving him her back without ever greeting him—alas, he's used to it.

^ Amelia Bloomer First to promote and design trouser-like garments for western European women to be worn generally. Already well-known in other parts of the world. Europeans were a bit slow that way.

#sap-Americans call it a blackjack. A potentially deadly weapon once habitually carried by police as well as criminals, it consisted of two heavy lead weights, one slightly larger, connected by a stiff spring of about 6" and covered in stitched leather-usually black. Meant to be held in the curled fingers of a fist with the lead ball ends peeking out each side, their purpose was at least dual: it was meant to lend weight to the fist (modern rolls of coins are today sometimes held similarly for the same reasons) and also the lead ends were meant to bend on their spring 'neck' and rush forward when the fist connected with something—like a face, for instance, or a jaw, breaking a bone or possibly causing a concussion and/or unconsciousness. However if you were a particularly nasty piece of work you might hold it more like a microphone, with the small end palmed and the heavier end left to describe a much greater arc before connecting with whatever you're punching or you could simply use it like a nightstick, saving your knuckles. Used this way-espeially that last way- a sap could bash in a skull and kill.


End file.
